LINDA at the Manhattan Theater Club

Very few other playwrights so evocatively plumb the plights of modern women as Penelope Skinner.

Unfortunately, Lynne Meadow’s stiff production – especially her direction of the acting –of Skinner’s Linda last season at the Manhattan Theater Club unduly emphasized the play’s artificial construction as opposed to focusing on its relevant vitality. The production needed to feel less theatrical and more realistic, as if the audience was watching lives unfold in front of them as opposed to a story too transparently being told to them. Granted, this artificiality admittedly may have been a result of the text’s shaky balance between aspiring to capture reality while also trying to even the historical scales of male-dominated dramatic works like King Lear, a clear influence on the play.